7:30 a.m. Teachers' Lounge

Before her first face-to-face class at her school in Texas, Jill connects to the Internet from the teachers' lounge to work on her VHS course. Her course can be accessed anytime from any computer that is connected to the Internet because her NetCourse is stored in Desire2Learn, a web-based platform. She opens the Internet browser and logs into her course through the VHS faculty website where she looks for new announcements from VHS, and then she accesses her class. This semester Jill has students in her class from different countries and eight different states within the United States that are participating through 14 different high schools. She wants to check and see if any new assignments or discussion comments have been posted from her students over the weekend. She loves seeing work from her students at all hours of the day, sometimes seven days a week. She assigns work on a weekly basis, making it possible for the 25 students to contribute equally to the course, despite their varying schedules and time zones. At a glance, she sees that her students have contributed new postings to the most recent discussion topics in the last 24 hours. After checking her course, Jill quickly checks her email to see if anyone has sent her a private message. Then she logs off to teach her face-to-face classes at her physical school in Texas.

Checking Postings in the Discussions Area

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